


Mountainside

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-31
Updated: 2007-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:30:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been bad this time – a rock slide that began beneath John's feet, dragging him down the side of the mountain as though he weighed no more than a child, gifting him with broken fingers, a dislocated shoulder, a ragged gash down the length of his calf that bled between Rodney's fingers, through bandages, onto rock and gravel and dust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mountainside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lamardeuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamardeuse/gifts).



It had been bad this time – a rock slide that began beneath John's feet, dragging him down the side of the mountain as though he weighed no more than a child, gifting him with broken fingers, a dislocated shoulder, a ragged gash down the length of his calf that bled between Rodney's fingers, through bandages, onto rock and gravel and dust. Worst of all had been the bruise on his forehead, the cuts and scrapes that ran into his hair, the way they couldn't wake him. Rodney had lost every word he'd ever possessed in the face of John battered and torn and hidden from them, limp and unconscious with Teyla's hands gently cradling his head.

They jumpered him out, gated to Atlantis in a heartbeat that felt too long, stretched thin and bleak, and when the gurney arrived they followed it blindly, waving Elizabeth's questions away. Rodney's gaze became fixed on a pebble caught in the tread of John's left boot. He wanted to pick it out, cast it aside, but knew in the end it didn't matter.

Carson worked his magic, returned the Colonel to them patched and darned, sleepy from pain pills and confined to a hospital bed for far too long. Recovery took months – PT and desk work, apple sauce and jello, toast and gabna fruits, a pizza at last. And the incident faded like all the others, became the silver of memory and aging scars, until . . . until Rodney dreams, and the mountainside takes John away from him once more.

He wakes in a sweat, panicked and angry, pulls on sweatpants for the sake of decency but charges through the halls with his hair stuck on end and his t-shirt creased. His feet are bare and when he steps inside John's quarters he suddenly thinks of socks and shoes. But John's awake, watching him, baffled and standing on the other side of his too-narrow bed, and Rodney thinks less of his toes and more of the way John had looked, unconscious on a mountainside, and the words he'd lost on that mission come suddenly, recklessly tumbling back.

"Just – don't, please, don't go – I dreamed about it, when you fell, when the," he waves a hand, "the rockslide and you were so, so hurt and I – just don't, okay? Don't do that, don't think you get a pass out of here before me, because I truly think that would be the straw that broke this camel's back and I'd become this – shell, and the Wraith could come and I'd try but my brain just wouldn't _work_ if you did, if you left, if you died, and so everyone would . . . because I wouldn't function if that was the way things were and please don't. Just – don't. Okay?"

And John blinks, watches Rodney as if he's figuring something out, ambles around the bottom of the bed and comes to a halt one half-step away. "Okay," he murmurs.

"Okay," Rodney says, nodding tightly. "Well. I'm glad we – "

And John reaches for him, reels him in like they've done this before, and if this were a love story they'd probably kiss. But love, Rodney thinks, is such a stupid word for what exists between them, a mess of injury and things they can't say, so it feels better, right somehow, to just step into John's arms, hold on tight and be held tighter still, press his nose into the crease of John's neck and think that in the scent of bad dreams and sweat lies the essence of who they are.

And then they do kiss, because that's some part of what keeps them in orbit around one another, but better, they tumble into bed and tangle their limbs. John curls willingly into Rodney's body heat, and Rodney kisses his temple, and the mountainside recedes from Rodney's subconscious as his fingers trace scars in his sleep.


End file.
